My last post was all about the experience of using reference managers as a student. This post is about my experience of librarians providing support for the use reference managers.

When I was working as a trainee at the Radcliffe Science Library I had the opportunity to get involved with some of the user education offered by the librarians. I tested the worksheets that were given to participants at user education sessions and helped at the sessions as a demonstrator (i.e. when the participants were on the practical part of a workshop I went round answering questions). There were some sessions which covered just reference management and some where reference management was just part of a session on research skills. Some sessions were a compulsory part of the course, but most were advertised by the library and open to anyone. Mostly they were aimed at undergraduates tackling their first research assignment and/or first year postgraduates. One-to-one sessions with subject librarians was also available. Different sessions used different software and certain departments had a preference for different software. The full range of courses included RefWorks and EndNote which were provided by the university as well as the (currently) freely available Zotero and Mendeley.